The Super Bowl is coming to the South Bay next season, and that will mean a lot of air traffic for San Jose International Airport.
Some people are hoping to leverage the big game as a way to get the city to lift or revise its flight restrictions to allow private jets to fly in at all hours.
Jon Rodgers, a former Bay Area and now Southern California aviation consultant, sent a letter to the NFL warning that fines of $2,500 can be levied under the current policy. He wants the league to get San Jose to revise the curfew around the Super Bowl.
But city officials don't want to hear about it. As more than one person said at Wednesday’s meeting of the San Jose Rules and Open Government committee, “What do you expect around an airport?”
The committee met to discuss issues that will – or won't – be taken up by the full City Council. One issue was the letter sent to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying the league should persuade San Jose to drop or revise airport curfew around the time of the 2016 Santa Clara Super Bowl.
Rodgers isn’t a neutral party and could benefit from a rule change. He has corporate clients with private jets and told NBC Bay Area by phone that, as co-host of the Super Bowl, San Jose should do more to accommodate the incoming guests.
"If they want economic policies to expand, and they want major league sports, then run the airport to handle it and manage the communities to take the noise,” Rodgers said.
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Some people who live near the flight path agreed and told the committee the city-financed noise-abatement measures work, but Mayor Chuck Reed silenced the discussion.
“I'd say it can't be done, couldn't be done and won't be done,” Rees said. “We have a curfew and the FAA is very, very restrictive on curfews. We have to apply it to everyone. People have exceptions to the curfew, and if you have the right kind of aircraft and at the right noise level, you can fly in anytime."
The San Jose Airport is accustomed to public noise about its noise. Restrictions on certain planes were first established in 1984 and then focused more closely on noise levels in 2003.
City officials on Wednesday shot down the idea, but Councilman Pete Constant said it will have to be revisited in the future.
"We need to decide whether the curfew needs to be modified potentially so that we can, not only take advantage of cargo flights, but also redeye flights that go to the East Coast or flights that depart for overseas,” Constant said. “Those are areas that we haven't been able to have.”
